Crop Circles: Signs, Wonders and Mysteries

INTRODUCTION

Beginner’s Mind

In Zen philosophy, they speak of something called ‘Beginner’s Mind’. It is where we attempt to go back to the beginning of something; a state of ‘focused openness’ where our preconceptions, and everything we think we already know about something, are temporarily set aside. It is often used when we feel we have reached a plateau of thought or come up against a brick wall and need to look at something anew. It is to become (for a while) timeless in our thinking, to unburden ourselves of our fixedness, our presumptions, even our prejudices, in the hope of finding fresh perspective or insight.

The subject of crop circles is difficult to raise in polite company these days without the obligatory joke about it all being a hoax. All the beauty, poetry and grace that they exhibit simply pass many people by, unnoticed, unrealized – an unreality. It seems that the subject has become something of a cultural embarrassment, especially to the English, who still can’t quite believe that they once fell for an obvious confidence trick by two men who wanted to fool the world into thinking that ET was talking to us. For the embarrassed, the crop circles remain to this day hermetically sealed behind a wall of rejection, not to be examined lest anyone be fooled again.

But, while many have walled themselves off from crop circles, the circles themselves have quietly and consistently continued to appear. In fact, since the heady days of 1990 and the height of their fame, they have progressively become more and more sophisticated and complex. Around fifty to sixty circles appear each summer in the UK alone (sometimes significantly more), with many more occurring worldwide – most notably in Germany, the Netherlands, Norway and Italy, as well as the USA and Canada; all regularly report the phenomena during their summer months.

Crop circles vary in size, from a few feet across to over a thousand feet in either diameter or length. In the UK, the average diameter is about 200 feet, hardly an insignificant size. These incredible works of geometric art are no small undertaking; nothing about them is casual, slapdash or unintelligent, quite the contrary, their designs are often incredibly clever and inventive.

On design alone, the crop circles of the past twenty years or so deserve a second look, as so much of what they symbolize is intelligent, significant and even pertinent to our world. The crop patterns might even be considered, on some level, powerfully transformative and instructive.

This book is about those designs and what they embody, the meaning that lies beneath the shapes and the perennial knowledge they seem to employ. It is about their variety and diversity and, paradoxically, their unity of language and ultimately their universality. A foray into the world of the crop circles can be edifying and even enlightening. It is a journey worth making the time to take.

But, how might we begin to break this cultural taboo, shake off enough of the baggage the crop circles can bring with them and begin to separate the wheat from the chaff? Perhaps we need to find that state of focused openness that Zen calls Beginner’s Mind.

It is my pleasure to welcome you to a new updated edition of this book. It is gratifying to know that crop circles are continuing to enchant and fascinate readers all over the globe. Since the first edition in 2006, crop circles have continued along their inexorable path, to a destination we cannot yet see or fathom.

They draw to them artists, writers, philosophers and free-thinkers from around the world. In an age when we have sacrificed much of the richness of human experience and perception in favour of the stark authority of science, one can see why crop circles have become icons of consciousness evolution and a rallying point for change. Many believe that we are currently living through the death throes of one world-age and the birth pains of a new era. That crop circles have become symbolic of this process is a fascinating phenomenon in itself and should also be a source of great comfort and hope for the future.

Everything and Nothing

Science and Hoaxing

From their very inception, the crop circles have steadfastly resisted our attempts to fit them into our current world-view. They have tantalized but so far eluded science and despite the claims of hoaxers and rationalists, they have refused to be completely explained away as an elaborate deception. At present, crop circles remain one of the most stubborn challenges to our view of what constitutes our reality because although they are there for us to experience, they do not fit in comfortably with our understanding of the world.

The public profile of the circles appears cyclical, seeming to rise and fall in waves. Every now and again, there will be a crop circle of such complexity or magnitude that it will tweak the public interest, but for every peak there is a corresponding trough, as new hoaxers and detractors come along to counter any resurgence of interest.

For all the hostility, it has to be said that the crop circles do not seem to care about what is said about them. They have continued their revelations undisturbed and undeterred throughout the years. Even in 2001, when much of the farm land in the UK was declared off limits due to the outbreak of foot and mouth disease, they continued to appear as usual. Government restrictions may have placed them out of reach to ground researchers, but they could still be recorded photographically from the air – seen and understood, their forms drawn and contemplated.

The vast majority of circles appear fully formed overnight, in the space of six or seven hours (sometimes less) during the summer months. Most are picture-perfect with no mistakes, even though formations are often hundreds of feet in diameter and created in the dark. If crop is flattened manually, there is no lifting it up again to cover a mistake.

Crop circles, it seems, have a life and agenda of their own and there is something about the doggedness of their persistence that, if nothing else, deserves our respectful attention. It is as if these giant expressions are borne of some imperative; a need to convey or illustrate something vitally important. This apparent compulsion becomes simultaneously more eloquent and more profound with each passing season.

To date, the work of biophysicist William Levengood forms the most comprehensive and credible scientific study of the subject. He has a background in research for the agricultural seed industry and so is well placed to investigate what might be happening. Levengood has detected some unusual characteristics in connection with both the soil and crops of the circles. He has found definite, demonstrable changes, which he insists are not accountable for by hoaxing alone. These changes occur at molecular and cellular levels and include specific changes to the nodal points of wheat and barley stems, which are seen to bend or rupture from the inside outwards. Whilst Levengood does not go as far as to speculate on the ultimate origin of such changes, he does believe that microwave energy may be involved, which superheats the crops for a fraction of a second, affecting the moisture content and causing the plants to soften and fall over, cooling in a horizontal position. This superheating also accounts for the nodal rupturing (these are called ‘expulsion cavities’) and the general bending of the nodes – the parts of the plants that store moisture. Furthermore, testing shows that this heat energy (as evidenced by the varying extents of changes observed in the sampled plants) conforms to known patterns of energy distribution, such as Beers Law. The soil samples collected also show unusual changes. Crystalline formations and even microscopic nodules (or ‘spherules’) of meteoritic iron, have been found and photographed – perhaps suggestive of a strange atmospheric effect at work. A number of papers by Levengood have appeared in peer-reviewed scientific journals that deal specifically with plant physiology, indicating that his work is well-regarded and has some independent scientific credibility.

The crop circles seem to teeter precariously between scientific fact on the one hand and the realm of the hoax-artists on the other. Although two or three of them might be faked for the press each year, the vast majority of circles go unclaimed. It is interesting (and rather depressing) that in the fifteen or so years since the first hoax was reported, the media have never tired of wheeling out the same well-worn story every summer. Such stunts claim by inference that the whole phenomenon is a joke – a claim that ignores the science. I have often wondered if the hoax theorists have fully considered the science, or have simply discounted it because, for them, it can’t be true.

A stalemate has been reached between the assertions made by scientific investigation and the idea that all circles are a hoax. Neither one can wholly account for the phenomenon; neither one can claim to have the argument entirely sewn up. This leaves the crop circles occupying a strange position, in which their origins cannot be wholly proved or disproved.

The Third Place

A change in emphasis and perception

Geometrically and symbolically, the crop circles make a great deal of sense to many people. They appear to speak in a universal language of metaphor, allegory and myth; their patterns are full of significance and meaning that is hard to ignore. Taken as a body of work, these gigantic symbols and mandalas seem to express something very deep about the nature of the world, and suggest a means of looking at reality in an entirely new way.

Such has been the nature of the perpetual search for the circles’ validation, that these less tangible elements have been largely ignored. We live in a world that finds worth only in those things that one can prove to be real; if there is no proof we tend to discount or dismiss things. The occurrence of crop circles has made this approach rather difficult, so with no end to the science–hoax stalemate in sight, we either choose to suspend all further work indefinitely or we have to transcend the argument altogether.

The interesting thing is that when you do loosen the tether on this dyadic state of affairs, you find that the symbolism and geometry of the circles is, in fact, a third way of probing their nature. No obstacle is put in your way, save the limits of your own imagination; the crop patterns are open-ended statements which you are free to explore at will.

Once this change in emphasis is engaged (from ‘who’ and ‘how’, to ‘what’ do they mean) the circles suddenly and magically unfold before your eyes. If it was not so bizarre, one might be forgiven for thinking that this is exactly what they want us to look at – not how they are made, or by whom – but what they might be saying.

After over fifteen years of following the crop circles closely, investigating and experiencing hundreds of them in person, I can honestly say that I do not know who makes them all or how – and I don’t even know exactly why. But what I can tell you is that I have come